Sartharion 10 man with 3 Drakes Strategy Guide Tutorial
Sartharion Abilities
- 2,500,000 Health
- Cleave - Deals 35% melee damage
- Tailwhip - 2 second stun, deals minor damage
- Fire Breath – Deals 10,000 damage in a frontal cone
- Pyrobuffet - Cast on anyone outside the central island, killing them within a few seconds
- Enrage - 15 minute timer
Twilight Drake Abilities
- Tenebron
- Aura - Power of Tenebron: Shadow damage taken increased by 100%
- Portal - spawns eggs which hatch into whelps
- Lands 30 seconds into the encounter
- Shadron
- Aura - Power of Shadron: Fire damage taken increased by 100%
- Portal - contains a disciple who increases Fire and Shadow damage taken by 50% and makes Sartharion immune to damage
- Lands 75 seconds into the encounter
- Vesperon
- Aura - Power of Vesperon: Maximum health decreased by 25%
- Portal – contains a disciple who increases Shadow damage taken by 75% and puts Twilight Torment on the raid, making them damage themselves when attacking
- Lands 120 seconds into the encounter
- All Drakes
- Shadow Breath – frontal AoE cone damage
- Shadow Fissure – spawns a shadowy void zone on the ground, dealing around 20,000 damage after 5 seconds in a small AoE.
Sartharion Boss Strategy: 10 Man (normal) with 3 Drakes
The following strategy is based off the experiences of my guild (Gloryhogs). This is how we decided to do the encounter and it’s what worked best for us, this is by no means the only way to achieve victory in this fight. You should adapt this strategy so it works best with your guild.
Video Strategy
My guild, Gloryhogs vs. Sarth + 3 Drakes:
Raid Setup and Group Synergy
- Tanks
- Paladin
- Warrior
- Death Knight
- Healers
- Shaman
- Paladin
- Priest
- DPS
- Druid (moonkin)
- Mage
- Shaman (elemental)
- Hunter
One of the most crucial aspects to this fight is achieving an optimal DPS synergy. Note we have a moonkin druid (adds 5% crit aura) and elemental shaman (3% crit / hit totem). Both of these in combination with our mage give our DPS that little extra it needs. In all honesty we should have brought another caster over the hunter. Under most circumstances this would have been the correct call, but we opted for the hunter anyway due to lack of available high DPS casters.
Starting the Fight
As you begin the fight your first concerns should be focused on the following:
- Setting up raid positioning, specifically for healers and tanks
- Establish positional awareness for firewalls, shadow fissures, and portals
The following diagram represents the position mapping used by my guild. These spots can be adjusted as they fit your raid group. Most of the raid will be in the northern section of the island. It’s important to maintain positional awareness throughout the fight and spread out. This will help you avoid shadow fissures much easier, allow tanks to find whelps on DPS and healers faster, and prevent the entire raid from getting breathed in the event of an aggro pull.
With regards to the drakes. I’ve indicated on the diagram the order in which they come down (1st, 2nd, 3rd). The asterixed indicators represent the 2nd positions of each respective drake. These drakes must be dragged to these positions in order to pick up the next drake which will be spawning their shortly (discussed below).
Tanking Assignments
- Death Knight…tanking Sartharion
- Paladin…primarily tanking adds, will help tank drakes later
- Warrior…tanking twilight drakes
Healing Assignments
- Shaman…raid healing and help watch warrior and paladin tanks
- Priest…death knight exclusively
- Paladin…primarily focused on warrior and paladin, secondarily heals raid
Your First Drake is flying in…
Okay, so here comes you first drake. I’ve indicated the position on the map that the first drake lands at. You’ll want to have your warrior pick up the drake and quickly build threat while dragging the drake to the asterixed position (1st*), note that this is the location where the 2nd drake will land shortly. As soon as your tank has sufficient threat your DPS should be going 100% burning down the drake.
Interlude on Adds
One the easiest ways to wipe on this encounter is to simply lose control of the adds. More often than not these adds are going rush straight for your healers. For this reason your tank on the adds has to be absolutely focused and pickup adds as soon as they spawn. Healers and DPS can assist the tanks by calling out when an add is on them. Additionally, your healers (not the priest) should stand near on or near your protection paladin’s consecration to further assist the paladin.
Here Comes the Second Drake…
Drake number 2 isn’t much different from the first. Your tank should already be positioned to pickup the second drake (2nd position). DPS should not begin attacking the 2nd drake until the 1st drake has been killed. After you kill the 1st drake you’ll want to round up all the adds and AoE them down. While your DPS is AoE’ing down the adds you’ll want to have your tank begin to reposition the 2nd drake (only after the 1st drake is dead). Take the 2nd drake is the asterixed position (2nd*), note that this is also the landing position for the 3rd drake.
After the adds are all dead DPS should begin to burn down the 2nd drake.
Third Drake Incoming…
Okay, so you’ve almost made it. DPS should continue to burn down the 2nd drake. So long as adds are not becoming a problem you don’t need to worry about AoE’ing them down yet. That said, if damage on your add’s tank is becoming too intense or their are lots of adds getting on healers or DPS you should burn them down again.
The most difficult aspect of this portion of the fight revolves around this drake’s acolyte’s twilight torment debuff. Not only does it increase fire and shadow damage, but it also causes you to deal damage to yourself when hit.
Now, some will tell you to simply go into the portal and kill the acolyte. This is no problem at all if you’ve got the group for it (IE, have a plate DPS and a hybrid healer outside of your original 3 healer), but for our group setup we elected to simply keep the entire raid out and slow damage while the twilight torment debuff is applied.
At this point there’s really no rush to kill the drake. Just make sure your DPS don’t DPS themselves to death (literally), keep the raid topped off and get ready to start on Sarth.
Finishing Sartharion…
After killing the 3rd drake you’ll want to go into the portal and kill the 2 adds still up. All of your DPS, 1 tank (death knight, note the tank switch below), and 1 healer should go inside the portal. Make sure you communicate with player’s outside the portal regarding the lava wave when you prepare to kill the 2nd add.
Next up, after you’ve killed the adds the portal you can begin on Sartharion. At this point Sartharion is going to be hitting much harder than in the earlier phases, for this reason we decided to do a tank switch, having our warrior taunt and tank Sartharion for the remainder of the fight. By now it’s fight over. Continue to dodge flames, off tank and kill adds as necessary, and burn Sartharion down!
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Just to add, by far the most important part of this fight (and the most difficult), is the point where both Shadron and Vesperon are alive at the same time.
During this point, both twilight torment and the fire debuff are active, causing you to not only hurt yourself on each attack, but also the lava strike meteors will hit for in excess of 10k. Essentially what this means is that if you go below 10k health from twilight torment, you run the risk of getting one-shot by a meteor.
Or you can just get unlucky and get hit by 3 straight meteors like our elemental shaman did =).
damn oro…
I’ve got a question about this: is there a need to gear the MT (the DK) up in a special way for this fight? I’ve been reading about crafting massive stamina gear and the like. What about the other tanks?
Also, the diagram for positioning is really helpful, but what’s the orientation? Which way is north?
In general you just want massive hp on your DK tank who is on sarth, since most the burst damage is magic avoidance won’t matter. This is also the reason why you often want to have a warrior switch with the DK on sarth after the 3rd drake is dead, as sarth starts to hit much harder.
I don’t remember which way is north in sarth’s lair, but you should still be able to ascertain orientation by the landing locations of each drake, which I’ve indicated above.
Thanks for the fast reply. :)
Regarding orientation, a better question to ask would be, where is Sartharion facing/standing before you engage him in relation to what is shown on the diagram? I ask this because when we last tried 3D, I seemed to recall that the first drake would land near where Sartharion stands before you pull him. (I could be wrong; it’s been awhile.)
Also, I’m planning on running a healer set up of Druid, Shaman, Priest. I know a Holy Paladin is highly recommended as a MT healer because of the high damage the tank will take, but do you think my set up will put us at a significant disadvantage? None of my healers seem to have incredibly large heals, and having the Prot-Paladin respec would leave us down a tank.
Thanks for all the help. :)
yes, you’re correct. Sarth starts essentially where the 1st drake lands.
I think you’ll be fine with the healing setup. I’d put your priest on your sarth tank, shaman on raid primarily, and have your druid just rotate hots and really watch tanks. You should be fine.
I see you guys stayed outside the portal for 1min and 26secs while both the second and third drake were down,what was the CD rotation did you guys use to keep the tank from being one shoted by flame breath?
Also the priest was holy not disc right?
yes, the priest is holy. I don’t know the specifics about the tank mitigation rotation, but I do know that we had a least the following…
2 BoS and of course all the DK mitigation abilities
mmk also one more thing what was the DPS being put out everyone over like 3.2K+?,and do you remeber if the hunter was the lowest because I have seen this with my top dps hunter due to him droping snake traps to help or somthing along those lines,and missing DPS time.
Most of the DPS was between 3.2-3.5k. If i remember correctly the hunter was somewhere need the middle of the pack. As far as what our hunter is doing specifically I haven’t the slightest clue, I’m generally too busy focusing on healing to watch what traps he is dropping.